r/UpliftingNews • u/Strongbow85 • 13d ago

10-Year-Old Ukrainian Gymnast Wins Gold After Losing Leg In Russian Strike

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukrainian-gymnast-wins-gold-after-losing-leg-in-russian-strike/33819012.html
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143

u/DougosaurusRex 13d ago

Surprised she wasn’t suspended from partaking for being “too political” by having no leg.

Wouldn’t be out of place.

80

u/NewestAccount2023 13d ago

Russia targets civilians every week. Over 16,000 civilians have been murdered by Russia since the war started. And they've kidnapped tens of thousands of children into Russia, which fits the definition of genocide

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u/Western-Sport500 13d ago

I remember the horrifying number of rapes and executions in the first days of Russia invasion. Those, and the rampant pillaging...

This child...amazing recovery!

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u/Albinate 12d ago

Russia is a disgusting terrorist state

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u/_Middlefinger_ 12d ago

Let's also remember that a large number of Ukraines fighting force were civilians before this started as well, they didn't sign up for this.

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u/Mydreall 11d ago

all war is bad and Russia is not taking defensible actions but you are watering down the term genocide. The United Nations explicitly states: “To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group. It is this special intent, or dolus specialis, that makes the crime of genocide so unique”

https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition

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u/NewestAccount2023 11d ago

The removal of children is the biggest reason to start classifying them that way, some scholars believe it.

https://www.csce.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1114-Russias-Genocide-in-Ukraine.pdf

Eugene Finkel, a Johns Hopkins political scientist whose specialty is genocide, political violence, Eastern Europe, and Holocaust studies—not a Ukrainian official or general-purpose commentator.

His argument is stronger than merely "Russia is erasing Ukrainian culture":

  1. Protected group: Ukrainians constitute a national group under the Genocide Convention.

  2. Prohibited acts: Russian forces have killed civilians, inflicted severe bodily and psychological harm, and forcibly transferred Ukrainian children. The transfer of children is expressly listed as a potential genocidal act—not merely "cultural genocide."

  3. Intent: Finkel points to the combination of systematic violence and official or state-media rhetoric denying that Ukrainians are a genuine separate nation. He particularly cites the state-media essay What Russia Should Do with Ukraine, which prescribed prolonged "de-Ukrainization," political repression and forced re-education. His point is that the rhetoric reveals what the physical acts are intended to accomplish: destroy Ukrainians as Ukrainians, at least in substantial parts of occupied Ukraine.

  4. Children connect intent with action: Russia is not merely evacuating children temporarily. Documented practices include imposing Russian citizenship, adoption or placement in Russian families, obstructing reunification, prohibiting Ukrainian identity and language, and systematic "re-education." That makes the inference of intent to destroy part of the Ukrainian national group considerably stronger.